Leland Hayward (February 27, 1945) | Willa Cather Archive

#3218: Transcription of Letter from Sarah J. Bloom on behalf of Willa Cather to Leland Hayward, February 27, 1945

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copy Feb 27 1945 Mr. Leland Hayward¹ 9200 Wilshire Boulevard Beverly Hills, California³
Dear Mr. Hayward:

I am taking care of Miss Cather's business correspondence, as she is now on her way to Mexico City⁴ and I will not be forwarding letters to her for some weeks.

Miss Cather has had very large offers from several producers for the right to film My Antonia⁵. We have had a great deal of correspondence on this subject, but she absolutely refuses to meet any proposition of this kind. She believes that any writing for the stage can be successfully reproduced by the cinema, but that a narrative which was written for the eye, and was meant to be read from the printed page, can not be successfully translated into a film. In this matter she is adamant. She has similarly rejected all propositions made to film Death Comes for the Archbishop⁶, My Mortal Enemy⁷, Lucy Gayheart⁸, and Sapphira and the Slave Girl⁹.

Very truly yours, Secretary¹⁰

Information about this letter:

Source File:: cat.let3218.xml
Letter identifier: 3218
Contents: Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
Person to whom letter was written: Leland Hayward ¹
Date letter was written: February 27, 1945
Place letter was written: New York, New York, United States²
Location of original letter: Charles E. Cather Collection (MS350), University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE

Person Annotations

1533

Hayward, Leland (1902-1971). Agent; stage and film producer. Born in Nebraska City, NE, Leland Hayward was the son of William Hayward and Sarah Coe Ireland Hayward, who divorced in 1911. His father subsequently became a hero during World War I and married heiress Maisie Manwaring Plant. Leland Hayward dropped out of Princeton University, becoming a reporter and press agent. He became an important Hollywood talent agent in the 1930s, but sold the agency in 1945 to become a producer. Hayward wanted to make a film of Cather’s My Ántonia, an offer Cather refused.

0102

Bloom, Sarah J. (1889-1961). Cather's personal secretary. Born in New York in 1889 to Russian immigrants Solomon and Bertha Bloom, Sarah J. Bloom worked for Cather from some time in the 1920s until Cather's death and continued to work for Edith Lewis on matters pertaining to Cather's literary estate thereafter. Bloom typed Cather's literary manuscripts and managed Cather's correspondence, typing dictated letters and sometimes responding for Cather when she was traveling. Bloom’s work for Cather supplemented full-time office employment in New York City (for many years she worked for the New York State Public Service Commission). She thus came to Cather and Lewis's apartment on weekends to take dictation, pick up and deliver typescripts, and deliver typed letters for signature. She died in New York city in 1961.

Place Annotations

New York, New York, United States

Beverly Hills, California, United States

Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico

Work Annotations

My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather

Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather

My Mortal Enemy (1926) by Willa Cather

Lucy Gayheart (1935) by Willa Cather

Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940) by Willa Cather